Hindi
NFDC to trim staff in move to turn profitable
NEW DELHI: The National Film Development Corporation, which expects to turn into a profit-making body by 2012-13, hopes to reduce its manpower by 30 employees in the near future in a move to cut costs.
The Corporation had in December 2008 reduced its manpower to 139, after offering Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) to 70 employees by paying them Rs 70 million. This has resulted in an annual saving of Rs 20 million.
The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has given the NFDC a grant-in-aid of Rs 120 million for VRS.
Launched in May 1975 with a corpus of Rs 30 million in 300,000 equity shares of Rs 100 each, NFDC got an additional share capital of Rs 35 million when the Film Finance Corporation and the Indian Motion Pictures Export Corporation were merged into it in 1980.
NFDC presently has an authorised capital of Rs 140 million and a paid-up capital of Rs 139.9 million. It has recently been given a fresh equity of Rs 212.3 million and has been allowed conversion of its working capital into equity.
Ministry sources also told indiantelevision.com that the interest on Rs 57.4 million on working capital loan has been waived. It has also been given Rs 200 million as preferential equity for restoration and digitisation of NFDC films, and a sum of Rs 300 million has been set aside in the Eleventh Plan for production of films in various regional languages.
The government released Rs 65 million in 2008-09 and a provision of Rs 65 million has been made for 2009-10 for financing films in regional languages.
The NFDC had in 1992 also launched a trust in the name of Cine Artistes Welfare Fund of India with a corpus of Rs 48.9 million, which presently stands at Rs 63.6 million. Just under 1000 cine artistes have availed pension and other benefits and around 450 are doing so at present.
NFDC has so far produced or financed over 300 films which include 17 international co-productions, the most prominent being ‘Gandhi’ which won eight Oscars including one for Indian costume designer Bhanu Athaiya.
The NFDC showed a loss of Rs 92.549 million in 2003-04, which came down to Rs 38.674 million a year later. The Corporation showed profit of Rs 24.815 million in 2005-06 but again ran into a loss at Rs 50.56 million and Rs 22.76 million in 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively.
Hindi
Jio Studios unveils AI-powered Krishna teaser at NAB Show 2026
Global first look of Krishna uses Galleri5 AI pipeline on Azure, Historyverse slate as Jio’s Dhurandhar crosses Rs 3,000cr worldwide.
MUMBAI: Krishna has just dropped a divine teaser and this time the gods are powered by silicon, not just scripture. Jio Studios and Collective Studios’ Historyverse stole the spotlight at the NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas with the world’s first teaser for their upcoming theatrical feature Krishna, directed by Manu Anand. The big reveal happened during Microsoft’s keynote “Powering Intelligent Media, From AI Experimentation to Real-World Impact,” where the film’s AI-native production pipeline took centre stage alongside Collective Artists Network’s in-house platform, Galleri5.
At the heart of this mythological spectacle lies a fresh cinematic workflow built by Galleri5 on Microsoft Azure’s advanced AI and cloud infrastructure. Forget bolting AI onto traditional VFX or animation, this is an end-to-end, production-grade system woven into every layer: world-building, character creation, shot design and final output. Yet the storytelling remains firmly director-led, emphasising emotional depth, stillness, music and performance rather than pure spectacle. The result? Large-format theatrical cinema rooted in Indian history and culture, but conceived in ways that were simply not possible before.
Collective Artists Network runs Galleri5 natively on Azure, leveraging Microsoft Foundry and cutting-edge AI tools to handle film, episodic and advertising workflows in a secure enterprise environment. Microsoft highlighted Collective as a “Frontier” organisation successfully moving AI from pilot projects to real production-scale deployment in cinema. The technology is also on display at Microsoft’s NAB booth in the West Hall (Booth W1731).
Jio Studios (Media & Content Business, Reliance Industries), president Jyoti Deshpande said the project advances the studio’s mission to take Indian stories global with scale, ambition and authenticity, “With Krishna, we are embracing cutting-edge AI-led filmmaking while democratising these tools to make them more accessible, intuitive and cost-effective for storytellers everywhere.”
Collective Artists Network founder & group CEO Vijay Subramaniam added, “We’re using technology developed in India to carry our culture and history to audiences worldwide at a scale never seen before.”
Microsoft, vice president for telco media & entertainment, gaming Silvia Candiani noted that the media industry has reached an inflection point, “AI is no longer about experimentation but delivering real impact at production scale… By building AI-native creative systems on Microsoft Azure, Collective exemplifies how storytellers can unlock new formats, move faster and realise a true return on intelligence while keeping human creativity at the centre.”
Krishna forms part of Historyverse, Collective Studios’ ambitious slate of history and culture-driven IPs. The slate draws from iconic figures and traditions that shaped the Indian subcontinent, including stories inspired by Kali, Karna and Durga. It builds on the already-released Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh series, showing how ancient narratives can be reimagined for modern screens.
Jio Studios, India’s leading content studio and the media and content arm of Reliance Industries, continues its blockbuster run. The studio’s Dhurandhar franchise led by Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge has become the first Indian film series to cross Rs 3,000 crore worldwide. It also delivered three consecutive years of India’s highest-grossing Hindi films: Stree 2 (2024), Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026). In just eight years, Jio Studios has assembled a library of over 160 films and series, with more than 60 titles winning over 500 awards. Other notable successes include Laapataa Ladies (India’s official Oscar entry 2025), Stree, Article 370, Shaitaan and Mrs.
The NAB unveiling marks another step in Jio Studios and Collective’s push to blend Indian storytelling talent with frontier technology proving that the future of cinema may well be both ancient in spirit and thoroughly modern in execution. For audiences who love epic tales with a fresh twist, Krishna promises to deliver divine drama, this time with a little help from the cloud.
